The Fraser river is an essential, multi-purpose resource involving the interests of every community in the lower mainland of British Columbia. Inevitably there is a continuing public dialogue about the use of the river and consequently about the water quality standards, management strategies and the technologies which will sustain the desired uses. This public discussion was recently focused upon the regional sewage treatment facilities under construction at Annacis Island in the lower main arm of the river. Planners need to refine their understanding of such public dialogue to help them in analysing environmental management policies, communicating with clients and educating communities about the best way to achieve their environmental goals. The study was exploratory and experimental. The primary aim was to identify and advance our understanding of the concepts and conceptualising processes which caused individuals, concerned about water quality standards in the lower Fraser river, to prefer different management strategies for the Annacis Island plant. The central hypothesis was that an individual's environmental management preferences could be more usefully explained and more accurately predicted in relation to his conceptualising preferences than in relation to aspects of his background experience such as occupation and education. The study was completed in four stages: 1. The repertory grid technique, developed by the psychologist George Kelly, as a means of investigating the ways in which an individual rationalises about his environment, was adapted to the Fraser river situation. Later it was applied as a major investigative technique within the questionnaire framework. 2. The literature about the Annacis Island case was reviewed and summarised to provide the empirical framework for the study. 3. A questionnaire was designed and administered, in person, to thirty individuals. Ten individuals were chosen to represent each of three public interest groups who had been vocal in the discussion about the Annacis Island plant. The groups involved were the fishing industry, environmental organisations and water quality managers. Information was solicited on three topics: a. The respondent's background experience, especially his use for the river, occupation and education. b. His management preferences for the regional sewage system, especially for the Annacis Island plant. c. His conceptualising preferences, especially the way in which he distinguished between attributes of the water environment. 4. The information created by the questionnaire was categorised and subjected to statistical analysis. The repertory grid technique was successful in eliciting information about the way in which people construe the river environment. Respondents demonstrated a universal preference for thinking about things found in the Fraser river in terms of four general distinctions: whether they were living or inert, man made or natural, did or did not harm the life in the river and either affected or were affected by the other things they contacted in the river. The respondents were most clearly differentiated by more specialised ways of thinking about the river environment. For example, they were distinguished by their preference for thinking in terms of ecological systems, management systems and abstract technicalities. Although these factors were not satisfactorily linked with management preferences they should be reconsidered in future studies. Conceptual complexity was the only factor decisively linked with management preferences. Those respondents who preferred to use a variety of concepts and information simultaneously were shown to have a greater preference for using both conservationist and innovative strategies in the management of the regional sewage facilities. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

Wood debris has been a natural component of the Fraser River system for centuries. However, with the development and expansion of a diverse forest industry in British Columbia, the volume of waterborne logging wastes being discarded into the river has gradually increased to the point where logging slash, uncontrolled sawlogs, trimmed log ends and dislodged bark now present a serious problem to the users of the Lower Fraser and its shorelands. Where water pollution can be defined as any residual discharge into a watercourse which causes both a deterioration in the quality of the receiving waters and some form of related social costs, sawlogs and other types of wood debris present a rather unique example of a pollutant to the Lower Fraser River. From this perspective, the available literature on pollution control provides an appropriate methodology for defining and analyzing the issues and problems associated with the presence of this material in the waterway. In 1972, uncontrolled sawlogs accounted for 9.2 million cubic feet of wood debris or roughly 80 per cent of the total debris load in the river. These logs were responsible for approximately 4.5 million dollars in costs to fishermen, pleasure boat owners, harbour authorities, and private logging companies. While it is realized that there are substantial additional costs related to the environmental impacts of sawlog debris, more studies are needed to determine the significance of these impacts on / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

This study investigates the relation between channel instability and sediment transport along an 80 km reach of lower Fraser River, British Columbia. The major processes governing instability, bank erosion and sedimentation were investigated by analyzing the patterns of morphologic change along the river over the last century. Morphologic changes were documented using historical maps and air photographs. The method of approach can be considered a "macroscopic" one since the investigation focused primarily on the gross patterns of change that occurred over periods of years to decades. It was found that this interval is the most appropriate time scale for investigating channel instability and sedimentation processes on a large stream such as the Fraser River. This is because the major features governing instability and sedimentation also develop over comparatively long time periods. Several examples are presented to illustrate how sequences of major channel instability have propagated along the river over periods of 10 to 30 years. These disturbances often initiated new patterns of sedimentation, local erosion and subsequent channel instability further downstream. The most common diagnostic feature associated with these travelling disturbances are relatively large, low amplitude, linguoidal-shaped "gravel sheets" that attach to more stable lateral bars and islands. These bars may cause strong flow impingement against previously stable banks and islands. As a result, rapid scour and erosion may be initiated even during periods of low discharge. Four different approaches were used to estimate the long term gravel transport rate along the river. These methods included direct measurements using trap samplers (carried out by Water Survey of Canada over a period of 12 years), a sediment budget calculation which related changes in transport through a reach to changes in the volume of sediment stored in the channel determined by surveys, a morphologic approach which used a simple model of sediment transfers through a reach, and finally theoretical bed load formulae. It was found that the sediment budget and the morphological model provided the most reliable and most generally applicable results. This was because the methods rely on observations of sediment movement over periods of years or decades. It was found that on Fraser River, the time scales of the major processes governing gravel bed load transport were also measured in years or decades. As a result, short term measurements such as from bed load trap samplers show only a poor correlation between transport rate and flow variables. Therefore, to estimate long term transport rates with these data, a very large number of observations is required to integrate the transport rates over time. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

Temporal and spatial variations of the Fraser River plume, in the central Strait of Georgia (British Columbia, Canada), are monitored by continuous salinity sampling of the engine cooling water on two B.C. ferries. Travelling along two different routes between Vancouver Island and the mainland the ferries provide eight crossings per day both north and south of the river outflow. From each crossing, characteristic measures of the plume are extracted, such as the average salinity and the maximum salinity gradient. These parameters are then formulated as time series and used to compute cross-correlations and cross-spectra with the probable driving forces of wind and river discharge. The effect of the tides is examined using harmonic analysis. Periods of high river discharge lead to decreases in the average salinity for each section, and peaks in the magnitude of the maximum salinity gradient. The correlation of the plume characteristics (average salinity, maximum salinity gradient) on the southern section with the along-strait component of the wind is consistent with advection by the wind. Weak correlation is found between the plume characteristics on the northern section and the wind. Linear combination of the wind and the discharge variations reproduce the general trend of the average salinities but cannot explain the level of variability. A shift to a nonlinear combination of the wind and discharge improves this comparison. The phases of parameter fluctuations at tidal frequencies, on the southern section, agree with the expected effects of tidal currents and the modulation of the river discharge. The agreement is not as apparent for the northern section. The level of the discharge is seen to affect the tidal amplitudes of the salinity fluctuations on the southern section. A numerical model, previously developed to examine the effect of tidal forcing on the plume, is modified to input the hourly wind and daily discharge data record. Equivalent average salinities along the ferry section are outputed and compared to the observed ferry data. Good agreement is reached after manipulating the entrainment velocity and the momentum transfer from the wind to the plume. The tides are seen to add a tidal modulation to the general salinity pattern resulting from the combined effect of the wind and the discharge. Horizontal distributions from the model and from CTD cruise results agree fairly well with each another. / Science, Faculty of / Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1993. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [134]-148).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2008. / "Graduate Program in Environmental Sciences." Includes bibliographical references (p. 106-112).

Thesis (M.S.)--OGI School of Science & Engineering at OHSU, Oct. 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.